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This article seeks to enhance the understanding as to why head coaches and general managers (GMs) in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) exit from their positions.

Three hypotheses were investigated using a series of quantitative and qualitative data from the past 30 years. The samples analyzed are comprised of 891 GM and coach annual observations for the NBA clubs and 949 GM and coach observations for the NFL clubs. Analyses include a logit analysis for coach exit/retention, a logit analysis for GM exit/retention and textual analysis via topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation.

Results show a correlation between a coach exiting and a GM exiting simultaneously, thus amplifying the importance of these two roles in enhancing or destroying the success of a club and supporting the need for a deeper understanding of both roles, particularly the GM. The results further highlight cultural differences across clubs in terms of GM and coach turnover, a factor that often is heavily influenced by club ownership.

The results support the role of owners in exits, confirm the importance of winning in avoiding an exit, find a high level of interrelationship between GM and coach exits and show that past culture of firings influences future exit decisions.

While the popular image of the Sherman Act is that of a “trust-busting” statute, conduct remedies have been more common than structural relief. This paper evaluates the effect on economic welfare of conduct remedies that have resulted from ten prominent Sherman Act monopolization cases. In general, we find that in some cases the behavioral relief has had no consequence other than the cost of litigation and cost of compliance; in other cases, the remedies probably reduced consumer welfare. Cases studied are United Shoe Machinery, AT&T, Std. Oil of California, IBM, United Fruit, Kodak, Safeway, GM, Jerrold, and Blue Chip Stamp.

This chapter analyses the causes and effects of the financial crisis that commenced in 2008, and it examines the dramatic government rescues and reforms. The outcomes of this, the most severe collapse to befall the United States and the global economy for three-quarters of a century, are still unfolding. Banks, homeowners and industries stood to benefit from government intervention, particularly the huge infusion of taxpayer funds, but their future is uncertain. Instead of extending vital credit, banks simply kept the capital to cover other firm needs (including bonuses for executives). Industry in the prevailing slack economy was not actively seeking investment opportunities and credit expansion. The property and job markets languished behind securities market recovery. It all has been disheartening and scary – rage against those in charge fuelled gloom and cynicism. Immense private debt was a precursor, but public debt is the legacy we must resolve in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of agri-biotech to play a role in meeting the world’s food, feed, fiber and fuel needs. Using case studies, policy developments in the key Asian countries of China, India and Japan are also scrutinized to determine the extent to which they enable or obstruct biotech’s potential.

The authors first examine some key challenges facing the agriculture and agri-food sector and the potential role biotech can play in addressing them. These challenges include feeding the world’s growing population, improving nutrition worldwide, dealing with allergen risks, reducing nutrient and chemical loading in watersheds, addressing water scarcity issues, and reducing waste in the food system. The authors then turn their attention to the agri-biotech systems in three Asian giants, including China’s centralized governance approach, India’s central-local policy and regulations, and Japan’s pragmatic and evidence-based regulatory framework.

Each nation has evolved its own system of governance based on the different challenges facing the society, the recognized potential of different biotech interventions, and citizens’ collective perceptions regarding both the potential and the risks that biotech innovations embody. Systems that are less evidence-based appear to be more discretionary and therefore are less predictable in their outcomes. This increases risks to prospective exporting firms and importing firms, driving up system costs and effectively serving as barriers to entry and to trade. It also dampens and distorts entrepreneurial and innovation incentives.

From the review and observations the authors then discuss ways and means of establishing priorities through a risk assessment framework in which key risks are enumerated and assessed in terms of their likelihoods and their conceivable consequences. Such an approach would allow challenges to be met with a degree of foresight and adaptability.

The sometimes disjointed, sometimes strategic use of biotech regulations have fragmented markets and created fiefdoms which undermine the potential of novel technologies to address the challenges facing society.

For illustrative purposes, the authors touch on land and water governance, regulatory and institutional bottlenecks and reforms and the potential for agri-biotech to play an elevated role if vested interests and obstructions can be overcome.

This study draws on research and literature from several disciplines. It also includes discussions relating to bureaucratic and administrative behavior which erodes the extent to which markets can be contested. This results in balkanized markets and non-cooperative behavior that undermines and distorts incentives for entrepreneurial effort and innovation. That such behavior takes place in markets and disciplines that are fundamental to assuring food security, nutrition and health, as well as good governance of scarce water and land resources is of considerable concern.

This chapter argues that the primary reason for the underdeveloped state of microfoundations research in language and communications studies is methodological. It asserts that the long-standing methodological division between micro and macro analyses (traditionally small-scale and large-scale, respectively) has led to their continued theoretical separation. The paper draws from Giddens’ theory of structuration and newly developed computational methods to outline an alternative, mixed-methods framework for discourse analysis that the author calls Recursive Analysis (RA). The author demonstrates the application of the RA framework through a case study of the electric vehicle industry that aligns small-scale and large-scale textual analysis to generate theoretical insights.

Purpose: to explore the experiences of employees in a local bank merger in the United States and examine the concept of job exit queues. We introduce the concept of a job exit queue, which describes how workers position themselves or are positioned by employers to leave jobs and enter new jobs following the announcement of a corporate merger. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative interviews with mid‐ level managers, technical specialists and low status workers during the sale and merger process were conducted and coded thematically. We explore: (1) how workers and managers describe the job search as an “opportunity” or as a recurring cycle of low‐wage, high‐turnover work and (2) how severance packages structure the job exit queue to meet corporate needs. Findings: The role of severance pay is pivotal in understanding women’s and men’s job relations to job exit queues. We conclude that employers create job exit queues, placing low status workers and mid‐level women managers with less formal education at a disadvantage in reemployment. Value: This paper contributes a new concept “job exit queue” to the research and theory on work place diversity, gender inequality, and queuing theories.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the governance implications of non-genetically modified (GM) voluntary private standards on the private label poultry meat value chain of the leading Italian retailer. Considered aspects are: first, the organizational practices adopted along the chain to assure effective segregation; second, the changes in the characteristics and governance of the key transaction (meat processor-retailer); finally, what makes the chain economically sustainable.

A picture of the chain is obtained collecting information from the businesses involved; the snowball selection criterion is used in identifying people to interview. Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) is used to conceptualize the organizational changes in the meat processor-retailer transaction; the coherence of expected-actual variations in asset specificity, uncertainty and frequency, as well as of the observed governance with TCE predictions is assessed.

The creation of the non-GM chain required investments by both the key actors involved and the establishment of a partnership based on trust and mutual dependence. The increase in uncertainty coupled with the rise in asset specificity led to higher transaction costs, requiring a shift of the governance structure toward the right side of the market-hierarchy continuum to economize on costs and improve supply chain performance. TCE well explains the changes occurred. The retailer values the return on image as a strategic asset and bears the non-GM extra costs making the chain economically sustainable.

The implications of the findings are twofold. First, they help to identify the critical factors for an effective and economically sustainable segregation of non-GM products/raw materials along agro-food value chains. Second, they show how chain actors could adopt tighter governance structures in order to comply with binding technical and quality specifications, economize on transaction costs and improve supply chain performance.

Retailer-led private standards used as regulation and enforcement mechanisms in vertical relations, as well as their organizational implications in the governance of transactions between actors in agro-food value chains have received insufficient attention. This research contributes to fill out this gap.

Objective – The current biotechnology revolution has been associated with newly developed genetic modifications (GM) that offer new prospects for increasing agricultural productivity. This has stimulated a rapid adoption of GM corn hybrids by U.S. farmers. Yet, there is concern about the structure of competition among biotech firms that own patents over GM traits. This chapter evaluates the spatial differences in pricing of biotech corn hybrids, with a focus on the fringe versus core regions of the U.S. Corn Belt.

Methods – The analysis examines how local conditions and market concentrations affect the pricing of GM corn hybrids in different locations.

Results – We find evidence of more extensive subadditive pricing in the fringe region. We also examine how both own- and cross-market concentrations affect prices across regions. For GM hybrids, the results show that market power is generally more prevalent in the core region compared to the fringe.

Conclusions – The evidence shows that the pricing of GM corn hybrids varies across space. The observed pricing schemes benefit farmers more in the fringe than in the core region of the Corn Belt.

This case is suitable for students just beginning to learn finance principles but is also appropriate to use in courses with experienced students and executives. In January 2008, Delphi Corporation (Delphi) had been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy for more than two years but appeared to be on the brink of approving a plan of reorganization (POR) that would allow it to emerge from bankruptcy with a significantly improved balance sheet. Delphi's POR called for a reduction of the company's leverage by exchanging the debt of the unsecured creditors for a mixture of new debt and new equity. The resulting reduction in interest expense was projected to return Delphi to profitability and make the restructured company a viable going concern. Students take the position of various claimants to explain why that claimant class would or would not vote for the plan.

Case studies of four important automobile firms are used to understand how the performance of both diversifying and new entrants into the automobile industry was conditioned by their pre-entry experience. Various conjectures based on the four firms are then tested using a unique data source on the pre-entry backgrounds of all entrants into the automobile industry from the commercial inception of the industry in 1895 through 1966. In addition to analyzing the types of pre-entry experiences that affected the longevity of entrants, the analysis also focuses on the conduits by which pre-entry experience influenced the performance of entrants and the extent to which pre-entry experience had enduring effects.